The United Nations selects its next secretary general this autumn. We asked all seven candidates to respond to two questions. First, we asked them to discuss an avoidable mistake the United Nations had made within the last five years. Second, we asked them what major reform they would undertake as secretary general. Five candidates gave us their answers.

The Darfur gap

Jayantha Dhanapala

There are many things the United Nations has done right. But like all institutions, it is fallible. Thus, as invidious as it may seem to single out one mistake, I must say that the violence in Darfur stands as an indictment against the United Nations. For three years, the suffering civilians there received little but hand-wringing, stopgap humanitarian efforts and an African Union peacekeeping force. Finally the Security Council last month voted to expand the United Nations mission in Sudan to include Darfur. That this resolution remains unenforced reflects the collective failure of the United Nations' membership and its institutions, including the Secretariat.

Darfur exposes the glaring absence of a rapid response mechanism for humanitarian disasters. Politics trumps compassion: The world has to wait for the Security Council to agree to act, for funds to be pledged and collected and troops to be deployed. We need a swiftly deployable humanitarian disaster management team, made up of experts from different disciplines supplied by member states. Members that have advanced satellite reconnaissance technology could provide early warning of disasters, both natural and manmade. And a small, robust force of rapidly deployable troops, with clear rules of engagement approved by the Security Council, would be necessary to protect humanitarian workers from attack or abduction.

After the avoidable tragedies in Rwanda and Srebrenica, the prevention of genocide and ethnic cleansing is central to human security in all its dimensions, and it is crucial to the United Nations' founding mandate: to eliminate "the scourge of war" and ensure human rights, the rule of law and economic and social advancement.

Climate of distrust

Ashraf Ghani

In his March report on reform, Secretary General Kofi Annan said that the United Nations "lacks the capacity, controls, flexibility, robustness and indeed transparency to handle multibillion-dollar global operations." Describing the organizational culture as "damaged," he acknowledges that a recent audit points "to both mismanagement and possible fraud" in peacekeeping operations. He concludes that reform efforts have addressed the "symptoms and not the causes of our underlying weaknesses."

These internal problems have undermined the moral authority and effectiveness of the United Nations, which ought to be the trusted global forum for reaching consensus and taking action on vital challenges. This loss is most directly felt in the poorest countries of the world. Yet distrust among member nations has slowed the momentum of reform.

The United Nations should foster global stability by investing in effective states and legitimate institutions. But doing so requires us to renew an organization designed for a different era. Through consultation with member states, I will seek an agreement on the key tasks that the United Nations must perform. I will lead a process of reform that will allow the United Nations to set the gold standard for transparency and accountability, and which will inspire talented women and men from around the world to work at the United Nations. Only by establishing trust in the organization can we make the United Nations the instrument of global choice for addressing the problems of our time.

Ashraf Ghani, the chancellor of Kabul University and former finance minister of Afghanistan.

Remember Timor

Shashi Tharoor

Reducing the United Nations presence in East Timor was a mistake that, given the chance to step back in time, I believe we would not make again. In May 2005, we pulled out the last of the peacekeepers, who had played a prominent role since 1999 in restoring peace to a ravaged land, leaving behind a small group of civilian advisers.

In hindsight, it's clear that this departure came too soon. Less than a year later, East Timor's hard-won peace broke down. In June, the country's first president, Xanana Gusmao, asked the United Nations to send the peacekeepers back, and in August the Security Council complied.

Few would deny that nation-building is a long and arduous task. But just how much international assistance is enough? And how do we keep conflicts from reigniting when peacekeepers leave?

The organizational change I'd emphasize is one that's just occurring: the establishment of a Peacebuilding Commission, a body charged with managing the transition from keeping a peace to building a stable society. We need to ensure that the commission becomes effective, pulling together Security Council members, troop contributors and development agencies to help bolster the economies and democratic institutions of countries emerging from conflict. To make peace truly sustainable, I would also involve our new Democracy Fund. If the United Nations can act to support democratic forces in post-conflict societies, we will help fulfill the founding ideals of our Charter while preventing the horrible waste of lives, effort and money that occurs when peace, once established, proves too fragile to last.

Shashi Tharoor of India, the United Nations under secretary general for communications and public information.

Developing goals

Vaira Vike-Freiberga

As a former refugee, I attach special importance to ensuring peace, security and the protection of the most vulnerable groups. Too often during the past five years, the United Nations has focused on the letter, not the spirit, of its charter when it needed to protect civilians caught in warfare. The international community's responsibility to protect must not be an empty concept but a genuine obligation, and United Nations peacekeeping mandates must be more robust.

Just as significant, if not more so for the long-term sustainable development of our planet, are the Millennium Development Goals. Progress toward the goals is still unacceptably slow. The statistics on infant mortality and maternal health, among others, remain particularly distressing. Unless we make better progress, the vicious circle of poverty, social strife and military conflict will require us to devote ever more resources to peacekeeping and humanitarian aid. At the same time, we should pursue intercultural and interreligious dialogue in order to find creative new ways to address the growing threats posed by terrorism, intolerance and religious violence.

To achieve the Millennium Development Goals, and to make the United Nations more effective both in its administration and in the field, we need to streamline its management, making it more accountable and transparent. If we eliminate unnecessary duplications, we can better finance our education, social and economic development efforts.

Vaira Vike-Freiberga is president of Latvia.

Go Global

Zeid Raad Zeid Al-Hussein

The United Nations faces a daunting range of challenges in the 21st century: promoting development without fostering dependency; combating climate change without reducing growth; defending human rights without insisting on one true path. But in the past five years, a specter has risen, casting a shadow across the world: the specter of extremism, instability and injustice gripping the Middle East.

The United Nations needs new leadership that understands these issues and can address all sides with experience and credibility. The fight against extremism is necessarily one with winners and losers - one where compromise may equal defeat and where genocide, mass murder and terrorism loom. The leadership of the United Nations must take a stand. To me, there is no starker lesson from the United Nations' failures in Bosnia and Rwanda.

The recent outbreak of war (and fragile peace) in Lebanon, and the conflicts in Africa, have reminded the world of the United Nations' unique legitimacy in restoring peace and security. Global legitimacy on its own, however, is not enough. The United Nations must also be effective. It should draw on the remarkable success of those societies - not least in Asia - that have seized on the promise of globalization to renew themselves. Like them, the United Nations must have the courage to discard the old and embrace the new in the name of progress.

The struggle against extremism and intolerance requires the efforts of every society, faith and agent of human dignity. The United Nations must recognize this struggle for what it is and be willing to play its vital part. Only if the United Nations has the will to change itself can it change the world.

Zeid Raad Zeid Al-Hussein, Jordan's ambassador to the United Nations, a former peacekeeper in the Balkans and the first president of the governing body of the International Criminal Court.

Stop the conspiracy theories: Alkatiri was not the victim of some malignUS-Australian defence cabal

**

The Australian, 26sep06

Some uncomfortable facts

The Australian, Wednesday, September 27, 2006

MARK Aarons's extraordinary attack on my reporting from East Timor ("East Timor drama had no hidden agenda", 26/9) ignores the basic question of who started the violence in May that brought the current crisis to a head.

Unlike Aarons, I'm a journalist and it is my job to report information I receive, even if it is unpalatable.

My job is not to be a cheerleader for a particular side. I have conducted thorough investigations in East Timor and have uncovered some uncomfortable facts. I know the UN investigation team is also privy to these facts and is arriving at the same conclusions I have reached.

If Aarons is so disturbed by my reports, then perhaps he should go to East Timor and do some reporting himself, rather than attacking journalists who've been there.

John MartinkusFlemington, Vic

New Matilda replies:

Editorial: Toeing the Line on TimorWednesday 27 September 2006New Matilda

This week The Australian published an opinion piece by Mark Aarons attacking journalist John Martinkus, and New Matilda, for articles we have published on the recent violence in East Timor.

Aarons argues that we are waging an extraordinary campaign against East Timorese resident Xanana Gusmão to implicate him in the downfall of former East Timorese Prime Minister Mar Alkatiri.

Aarons makes a number of personal attacks on Martinkus which we need not dignify with a response, but what we can address directly is his questioning of two pieces of evidence presented by Martinkus in New Matilda.

Aarons rightly argues that a note written by Gusmão to rebel soldier Alfredo Reinado (available in full on our website) is not evidence enough to claim that the two were in league to violently overthrow Alkatiri. We would agree. But that does not make it un-newsworthy.

In fact, Martinkus and New Matilda, presented the letter for what it is: proof of a close relationship between Gusmão and Reinado at the height of the East Timorese crisis extraordinary if you consider the facts in an Australian context.

If John Howard dropped a friendly note to a renegade Australian soldier who had fired on the Australian Defence Force or the Australian Federal Police using stolen weapons, would Aarons suggest journalists ignore it?

There has been no refutation by Gusmão of this close relationship with Reinado.

In a follow-up article for New Matilda last week, Martinkus cited a statement by former police commander Abilio Mausoko Mesquita, who is in jail for his role in the violence. In the document which was leaked without Mesquita’s knowledge or permission Mesquita claims that Gusmão himself ordered him to attack the house of the Commander of East Timor’s military, Brigadier Taur Matan Ruak, on 24 and 25 May.

Martinkus stresses that if legitimate, Mesquita’s leaked statement implicates Gusmão in the armed violence in East Timor.

Aarons dismisses the document as absurd but offers no evidence as to how he has come to this conclusion. He cites Australian journalist and East Timor correspondent Jill Jolliffe’s claims on our website that the document is demonstrably false. But Jolliffe has not demonstrated the falsity of the document or its contents.

Aarons also suggests that because other journalists ignored the story, Martinkus and New Matilda should have too. Sounds like pack journalism to us.

What Aarons conveniently ignores in his article and fails to explain are facts uncovered by The Australian’s own Mark Dodd: that Gusm’o paid at least a share of Reinado’s hotel bill during the crisis.

John Martinkus and New Matilda have reported some inconvenient stories about the situation in East Timor, without fear or favour. Where appropriate, we have made available the documents that substantiate those stories.

Like Aarons, we eagerly await the report of the International Special Inquiry Commission on the causes of the recent violence in East Timor.

We will continue to present the facts as we uncover them. We would invite our critics to do the same.

Peter Murphy's letter to the Australian:

Dear Editor,

Mark Aarons really is on the defensive with his 'no hidden agenda' opinion piece yesterday, which aimed to discredit reports by John Martinkus from Timor Leste.

Far from engaging in conspiracy theories, Martinkus has reported some facts about Commander Rai'los, Major Reinado, and Abilio Mesquita. None of these facts are flattering to Mr Aarons' hero, President Gusmao, but perhaps it's time for Mr Aarons to face them, nonetheless.

I was in an official welfare meeting in Dili on June 20 when the Australian Federal Police liaison reported the arrest of Mesquita the previous night, saying that he was 'Dili's most wanted'. Sixteen automatic weaposn were found in Mesquita's house.

Could Mr Aarons say why the Mesquita statement is 'demonstrably false', rather than simply asserting so?

Yours sincerely,Peter Murphy

Bob boughton's letter to The Australian:

Dear Editor

Once again, Mark Aarons poses as an expert on East Timor in your newspaper's opinion columns from the comfort of Sydney. Ignoring the writings of reputable scholars of the country, and attacking the credentials of journalists who dare to differ, he produces his own stream of propaganda, a simple black-white fairytale where Alkatiri and FRETILIN are all bad and Xanana and Horta are all good.

The tragedy is that well-meaning Australian officials and international aid workers who have been fed a steady diet of such nonsense come to Dili thinking it is all clear. They repeat the analysis, without knowing the power they have, and further marginalise all the Timorese who understand that things are not so simple, after years of war and trauma. This is a fractured society, and no political force in the country has been able to unite it. Democratic politics might do so, but it is extremely undeveloped.

The threats to peace and democracy comes not from the current leadership of FRETILIN, but rather from those who seek to weaken FRETILIN, from outside and within.

Why? Perhaps because it was democratically elected (80% of the vote at the September 2005 local elections), it is well-organised, it has a progressive rather than a neoliberal political program, and it is fiercely protective of East Timor's national interest, including its rights to its oil resources.

No one is saying FRETILIN is perfect. But a party which helped to defeat one of the worlds biggest and most brutal colonial powers, and then, within a few short years, transformed itself into a democratically-elected government, deserves some respect. What does Aarons know of the difficulties of transforming a brutally oppressed people whose unity was based on a clandestine war of independence into an open democratic society? Despite his claims to be a journalist, he appears not to have interviewed a single one of the leaders he attacks. As one who has spoken extensively with senior FRETILIN Ministers and party leaders over recent years, including in the last two weeks, about their policies and programs in my field of expertise (adult education), I can assure your readers they are not as Aarons paints them.

They are struggling, as would anyone in their positions, to reconstruct their country, ravaged by twenty four years of war. They and the people of this country deserve all the support we can give them. Publicly taking simplistic sides in other country's internal political disputes, especially in a post-conflict society, is neither wise nor helpful.

Dr. Bob BoughtonDili.

The writer is a Senior Lecturer in Adult Education at the University of New England, Armidale NSW, currently involved in a long term research and capacity building project in literacy and adult literacy and basic education in East Timor.

Chris Ray's letter to The Australian:

Mark Aarons ('East Timor drama had no hidden agenda' 26/9) labels journalist John Martinkus a 'propagandist' pushing a 'conspiracy theory' that Mari Alkatiri was ousted in a coup involving President Gusmao. Strangely, Aarons makes no mention of evidence - uncovered by The Australian's own Mark Dodd and reported on your front page September 12 - that Gusmao paid the hotel expenses of army rebels led by prison escapee Major Reinado, a key actor in the anti-Alkatiri push who faces a charge of attempted murder. Martinkus and Dodd have managed to throw some light on a very murky affair. Why does Aarons respond with a partisan rant to evidence which contradicts his preconceived view of the facts?

THE UN mission in East Timor has been thrown into disarray after the appointment of a new mission chief was revoked when it was realised he could not speak English.Antonio Macarenhas Monteiro - the former president of Cape Verde, an archipelago off the western coast of Africa - was named UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special representative in East Timor on September 19, but he has now been told the job is not his.

The Australian understands from diplomatic sources in Dili that President Xanana Gusmao was concerned by the choice ofreplacement for Sukehiro Hasegawa.

It appears no one at the UN had bothered to ask whether Mr Monteiro, a lawyer, could speak English.

When it became apparent that he could not, his tenure as East Timor's shortest-serving UN head of mission was terminated.

"Right now, there is nobody running the show," said a Dili-based Western diplomat.

"He (Mr Monteiro) was offered the job by the UN under-secretary for peacekeeping operations. He accepted the job, but it's now been terminated in between the offer and Kofi Annan's confirmation."

The UN had begun the hunt for a new head of mission.

Mr Hasegawa's bid to stay in the UN's top job in Dili was strongly opposed by the US, Australia and Britain, amid concerns he could have done more to prevent the troubled country's descent into violence in April.

Mr Monteiro, 62, was Cape Verde's first democratically elected president and served two consecutive terms before taking on the role of president of the country's Supreme Court.

East Timorese Prime Minister Jose Ramos Horta this week met the leader of the so-called "petitioners" - a loose grouping of 600 former soldiers whose actions in deserting the army earlier this year triggered months of violent unrest.

On a visit to their base in Gleno, 50km south of Dili, Mr Ramos Horta commended the rebels for staying away from political demonstrations.

One of the group's supporters, Australian-trained army major Alfredo Reinado, remains at large after breaking out of Dili's Becora prison with 56 other inmates last month.

WELLINGTON, Sept. 28 (AP)--New Zealand police helping to keep the peace in East Timor as part of a U.N. security force will stay there for another 12 months, New Zealand's police minister said Thursday.

Police Minister Annette King said the move "reinforces the New Zealand government's commitment to peace and stability" in East Timor.

The current 25-strong New Zealand police contingent in the country will be replaced with fresh members when its three-month service term ends on Oct. 10, she said.

The U.N. mission was established last month and has taken over responsibility for policing from the Australian-led Joint Task Force.

New Zealand deployed more than 200 troops and 25 armed police in May as part of an Australian-led international force of more than 3,000 troops to restore peace in Asia's newest nation after nearly 100 people were killed in violent clashes and arson attacks.

The violence erupted after the government sacked 600 soldiers, sparking broader unrest that saw rival gangs battling on the streets of the capital, Dili.

Some 150,000 of the tiny nation's 800,000 people were driven from their homes in fighting that followed the dismissals.

A major U.N.-led international presence will be needed for the foreseeable future to keep the peace and organize and supervise the country's legislative and presidential elections next year, Foreign Minister Jose Luis Guterres told the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday.

"New Zealand police have shown their ability to make a positive and valued contribution, alongside their international counterparts, to the lives of the Timorese people," King said.

Some 160 New Zealand troops remain in the country to assist police.

New Zealand police have previously served in U.N. missions in East Timor, prior to the territory gaining independence from Indonesia, and in Namibia and Cyprus.

INTERNATIONAL police in East Timor fired tear gas to disperse groups of youths fighting on the streets of the capital today and later arrested some at a refugee camp, witnesses said.

Youths hurling rocks clashed with others from a major refugee camp in Dili's Colmera area until the police working under UN authority intervened, witness and camp resident Teresa do Carmo said.

The incident was the latest in a series involving youth gangs on the streets of the seaside capital since deadly unrest in May that led to some 3,200 peacekeepers being deployed to maintain calm.

“I saw myself the Australian police fire five canisters of tear gas and none of us could see anything,” 42-year-old Ms do Carmo said.

She said the police entered the camp and arrested about 30 young men living there and “wreaked havoc among the tents and damaged kitchen utensils that they found”

“Other people outside were the ones who provoked and pelted us, and then the (people here) responded. But police came and only arrested those living at the camps,” she complained.

”Police also seized our kitchen knife and firewood that we used to cook.”

About 200 UN police and Australian troops encircled the camp, an AFP correspondent reported, while an Australian helicopter hovered overhead. He saw about 20 men detained and police confiscate knives and sticks.

Police declined to immediately comment.

May's initial violence, which left at least 21 people dead, was triggered by the government's dismissal of some 600 soldiers who deserted the army complaining of discrimination.

Tens of thousands of East Timorese remain in refugee camps, still too afraid to return home amid the uncertain security..

THE man appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, to head a new mission in East Timor has decided not to take the job, in a setback for plans to help the country recover from months of violence.

Antonio Mascarenhas Monteiro, a former president of Cape Verde, who originally accepted the job earlier this month, has changed his mind, which will leave the UN mission in East Timor leaderless for weeks as international police and troops struggle to curb gang violence in the capital, Dili.

The mission is also under pressure to move quickly to help organise national elections scheduled for April.

The mission approved by the UN Security Council in August has been without a leader since it formally assumed responsibilities in East Timor almost a month ago. Japan's Sukehiro Hasegawa, who had led the former UN mission since 2004, has already left the country.

The new mission will consist of 1600 international police, including 130 Australians, and about 500 UN civilian personnel. Hundreds of Australian troops will also remain in the country.

Mr Monteiro told the UN this week that he decided not to take the job because of opposition to his appointment in Dili.

He told a news conference in Cape Verde, an island state in the North Atlantic and former Portuguese province, that he knew there were some "reservations" about his appointment in East Timor and "I was no longer interested in serving there".

"The functions of a representative of the UN Secretary-General in East Timor are very broad and must be exercised with the goodwill of all parties involved," Mr Monteiro said.

"It is better to stand down now than to create problems later on, especially in view of the complexity of the situation in East Timor."

Some of East Timor's leaders are known to have questioned Mr Monteiro's appointment, partly because of a perception that he would favour interests aligned with "lusaphone" (Portuguese-speaking) countries such as Portugal, Mozambique, and Angola.

Critics of East Timor's deposed prime minister, Mari Alkatiri, have often accused him of pursuing Mozambique-type Marxist policies; Mr Alkatiri spent years in exile in Mozambique and Angola.

Another criticism of Mr Monteiro was that he was a poor speaker of English and many of East Timor's young people cannot speak Portuguese, even though it is one of the country's formal languages.

Some leaders are known to be disappointed that Mr Annan did not select an experienced UN administrator for the job, as he did in 1999 when he appointed the Brazilian Sergio Vieira de Mello, who served in the country until May 2002. Mr de Mello was killed in a bomb blast in Iraq in late 2003.

A UN spokeswoman in Dili said last night that she had not been told when a replacement for Mr Hasegawa would be appointed.

In the meantime Finn Reske-Nielson, the UN's humanitarian co-ordinator in East Timor, would stand in as Mr Annan's special representative, she said.